There are some profound prayers in Cole Arthur Riley‘s Black Liturgies. This is a prayer for aging that follows her letter “to mortal souls”. Her prayers are long and articulate. They may not be our first prayer language and need some work by us if we are to make the prayer our own. I have added the line breaks and retained her American spellings. There’s a lot of love in them. One line particularly resonated with me. I have made that bold.
God of old,
Some days it’s as if the world is looking right through us.
Comfort us as we are bombarded with a hundred tiny reminders that to some we matter less and less.
In a world that devalues and discards the elderly, make our dignity known.
We have been cast to the margins of society’s most pressing conversations.
…
Help us to possess a stability of heart as we are forced to question our worth and contribution daily.
Protect us from the ageism of a culture that fetishizes youth.
They want every trace of our days erased from our flesh, our skin, our hair.
Reveal the toxic irony of this, for it is in the days that we’ve lived that we have become more human.
Each year that passses brings us closer in alignment with our true selves.
May we know our own interior landscapes by heart, that we would be familiar enough with our own thoughts, fears, and loves to find rest with ourselves.
Grant us imagination for new ways of existing in the world, that we would not be confined by time’s expectations, but would retain a sacred vigor for life in the company of those who love us.
We have lived.
Give us the wisdom to make sense of our days.
This body has carried us.
Give us courage to honor it, as we meet it anew each day.
Amen
Black Liturgies was published by Hodder and Stoughton in January 2024. In her preface, Cole Arthur Riley promises her readers: “every word in this book has been written, interrogated, and preserved with an imagination for collective healing, rest, and liberation.
Grits and Grains 